For their new record, Judas Priest turned back the clock to time warp some of their ’70s prog-metal spirit into 2024.
When people talk about Judas Priest, the band’s biggest hits easily spring to mind, and rightfully so. “Breaking the Law,” “Living After Midnight,” “Heading Out to the Highway,” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” were the songs that made the iconic British metal band a household name in the ’80s. But long before such MTV-friendly anthems catapulted them into superstardom, and more recently, earned them a nod from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category, Judas Priest cut a more progressive rug.
Their ’70s-era albums, like Stained Class and Sin After Sin (the latter featuring session drummer extraordinaire Simon Phillips), are masterworks of early progressive metal. Songs like “Victim of Changes,” “Sinner,” and “Beyond the Realms of Death” exude a stylistic depth and structural breadth that was mostly shed during their ’80s heyday. The rhythms—bass and drums in particular—were more adventurous, and the arrangements more intricate. It’s a style of music that would subsequently evolve through bands like Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, and others who have since come to define and expand the genre.
On their new album Invincible Shield, Judas Priest is retrieving a bit of that musical heritage. “I said a long time ago, when we were writing these songs, that they came out a bit more progressive,” says lead guitarist Richie Faulkner. “It’s not progressive like Dream Theater or Rush, but there are a few more twists and turns musically.” Indeed, the songs on Invincible Shield are definitely more complex than one might expect from the band, with many of the arrangements more akin to their ’70s period than the following decade’s crowd-pleasers. Songs like “Panic Attack” and “Trial By Fire” are either built around, or feature significantly, odd-time riffs, a far cry from the 4/4 time signatures Judas Priest built their global success around. Throw in a heaping cup of Screaming for Vengeance-era ferocity in terms of delivery on songs like “Gates of Hell” and “Crown of Horns,” and you have the basic ingredients of Invincible Shield. Bass player Ian Hill, who has been going through the set list for the upcoming tour, is also connecting the musical dots to past works. “The things I’m running through, like ‘Victim of Changes,’ ‘Sinner,’ and ‘The Sentinel,’ are all in the same mold,” the bassist explains. “There are lots of different parts—light and shade—it’s not just all one thing or another. And Invincible Shield is very much like that.”
Judas Priest - Crown of Horns
Originally formed in Birmingham, England, in 1969, Judas Priest has been through an unusually long list of lineup changes, with the core of the band evolving to include guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton, bassist Ian Hill, and singer Rob Halford by the release of their debut LP, Rocka Rolla, in 1974. A revolving cast of drummers, including Les Binks and the aforementioned Phillips, mostly ended when Dave Holland joined in 1979, occupying the position for 10 years. Following his departure, Scott Travis joined and has been with the band ever since. Downing left the band in 2011, replaced by Faulkner. Tipton remains an official member of Judas Priest, but his touring activities have been limited since 2018 due to Parkinson’s disease, with Firepower and Invincible Shield producer Andy Sneap filling in for him on the road.
“There are lots of different parts—light and shade—it’s not just all one thing or another.” —Ian Hill
The elements of early Judas Priest’s sound, including Halford’s operatic vocal style and the twin-guitar power of Downing and Tipton, forged a template that would help define the heavy metal genre. Their 1977 release Sin After Sin was their first under a major label, and the first of 10 consecutive records to be certified Gold or Platinum. Then, 1980’s British Steel brought them notable mainstream attention with hits “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight.” A decline in exposure during the mid 1990s, coinciding with Halford leaving and being replaced by Tim “Ripper” Owens, seems a distant memory, as the 2000s saw the band once again become a major force within the metal community. They were inaugural inductees into the VH1 Rock Honors in 2006, received a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2010, and had their songs featured in popular video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. 2018’s Firepower was the highest-charting album of the band’s career, and in 2022, Judas Priest were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Judas Priest caused quite a stir online when they announced the title and artwork for their 19th studio record, but Richie Faulkner says it’ll all make sense in the end.
Priest’s musical renaissance on Invincible Shield certainly adds greater dimension to their signature sound, but it isn’t really about taking a trip down memory lane. The nod to the past is mostly tangential. The real impetus was wanting to scratch a particular collective itch. “It’s a question of, ‘What can we do different? How can we make this more satisfying as a piece of art?’ If that doesn’t sound too pompous,” explains Faulkner. “You want to challenge yourself and you want to build upon what you’ve done already.”
“It’s a question of, ‘What can we do different? How can we make this more satisfying as a piece of art?’” —Richie Faulkner
Priest has never really been a band to repeat themselves too often. Yes, they’ve followed trends and exhausted songwriting formulas, but they’ve always adapted to changing times and band members. Between Andy Sneap’s fiery, modern production, Faulkner’s youthful and aggressive influence, and the underlying DNA—four of the guys in the band have been there for decades—Judas Priest pull off a pretty compelling hat trick on Invincible Shield. “You want to do something that’s going to be challenging, but also satisfying to us as creative people, and hopefully ticks the boxes for the fans as well,” says Faulkner.
There was, however, a bit of backlash from fans on social media over the album’s title and artwork when it was first announced—commenters felt it was boring and “cheesy”—but Faulkner says context will hopefully bring it all together. “I saw the comments,” he says. “I don’t stick my head in the sand. It’s heavy metal, it’s the shield that we all fly proudly and get behind, and it’s the thing that binds us together.” When the name, the artwork, and ultimately the music all come together, it will make sense, he says.
Glenn Tipton's Gear
Illness has forced veteran lead guitarist Glenn Tipton, pictured here in 2001, to step back slightly from his duties in Judas Priest, but it didn’t stop him from shredding on Invincible Shield.
Photo by Frank White
Guitars
- ESP GT-600 Signature Model with Glenn Tipton Signature EMG GT Vengeance Pickup Set
- Hamer Phantom GT Signature Model
Amps
- Engl Invader II E642II
- Engl E412VGB 4x12
Effects
- dbx 166A 2-Channel Compressor/Limiter
- DOD FX40B Equalizer
- Dunlop DCR-2SR Cry Baby Rack Module
- Mike Hill Services A-B Both Amp Switcher
- Rocktron Intellifex 24-Bit Digital Effects Processor
- Yamaha SPX90II Digital Multi-Effects Processor
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball Custom Gauge (.009–.038)
- Ernie Ball .46 mm picks
With Tipton sidelined and Downing out of the fold for more than a decade now, much of the writing and recording on Invincible Shield fell on Faulkner’s shoulders. Tipton is still contributing from the bench, but it’s Faulkner’s show now. When asked about the musical direction on Invincible Shield, Tipton adds, “It is definitely a case of Richie joining the writing team with his own individual ideas and going at it from slightly different angles.”
“It’s a question of, ‘What can we do different? How can we make this more satisfying as a piece of art?’” —Richie Faulkner
One noticeable difference wrought by those writing angles is the standout performance on Invincible Shield from Ian Hill. Though he’s been historically overlooked in the annals of great metal bassists, Hill has been the foundation of Judas Priest from the beginning, and is, in fact, the band’s only full-time original member. On Invincible Shield, he proves to be more than a root-note-pumping low-ender. Songs like “Panic Attack,” “The Serpent and the King,” and “Giants in the Sky” feature what Hill would call “busy bass work.” There are a lot of unison riffs between the bass and guitars, more along the lines of what you might expect from Iron Maiden, for example, or Stained Class Priest, even. Yet Hill’s approach remains simply focused on the songs. “I’ve always not done much more than what’s necessary,” he explains. “If you’re putting too much on it, you’re actually detracting from the song. This time around, the songs are busier and called for a little more movement.”
Richie Faulkner's Gear
Richie Faulkner has been a member of Priest since 2011, but he still gets nervous showing song ideas to his bandmates.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
Guitars
- Gibson Flying V Signature Custom with Richie Faulkner Signature EMG 57/66 Pickup Set
- Gibson Custom Shop Flying V with Floyd Rose
- Gibson Custom Shop Flying V
- Gibson Custom Shop Explorer
- 1983 Gibson Les Paul Custom
- 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom
Amps
- Marshall JCM800 2203
- Wizard Modern Classic II
- Wizard GCL 4x12 with Celestion G12H-150 Redback speakers
Effects
- Boss DD-7 Digital Delay
- Boss SL-2 Slicer
- Dunlop JC95B Jerry Cantrell Signature Rainer Fog Cry Baby Wah
- Dunlop JD4S Rotovibe Chorus/Vibrato
- Dunlop DCR-2SR Cry Baby Rack Module
- MXR Micro Chorus
- Wampler Tumnus Deluxe
- Wizard Gate Minder
- RJM Music Technology Effect Gizmo Audio Loop Switcher
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus
Strings & Picks
Unlike Firepower, an album they had the luxury of recording together, Invincible Shield was done remotely, largely due to the pandemic. “The bare bones of these songs have been around since 2020, just before the lockdowns happened,” recalls Faulkner. After the lockdowns were lifted, the band went back out on the road for their 50th Anniversary tour, and scheduling conflicts ensued. Not to be deterred, and with enough experience to know there’s never a perfect time to do something, the band decided they were going to record the new album however they could, rather than wait for the perfect moment. “Sometimes you just have to do what you can do with the tools that you have,” says Faulkner. “So, I recorded the guitars in my studio at home. The drums were recorded in Nashville, and Rob’s vocals in Phoenix.” Hill actually put most of his bass lines down in hotel rooms on the last tour. “Andy is with us anyway, and he’s got his laptop,” Hill explains. “And you get these days off where you’re sitting around doing nothing, so we figured we might as well be productive. It was a great way to do it, just me and Andy. You’ve got another pair of eyes and you can try different things for the same part.”
“I’ve always not done much more than what’s necessary.” —Ian Hill
Invincible Shield is also a testament to how technology has revolutionized the process of making records, even for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Faulkner tracked his guitars at home using the Neural DSP Quad Cortex on a Marshall plexi-like setting. He then sent Sneap that sound along with a clean DI, so he could reamp it. “I think it was a Marshall JCM800 that he used. It’s a new combination—I’m joking,” he laughs, citing the holy grail of rock guitar amps. Faulkner says Sneap also put some gain boost in the front. “He’s a fan of the EVH 5150III and he had some plexis that he was using as well, so I’m not sure how he blended them, but that’s what he usually uses.”
Ian Hill's Gear
This year mark’s Judas Priest’s 55th year as a band, but they’re still chasing artistic and musical goals. “There’s always a challenge in making art,” says Faulkner, “and that’s what makes it special.”
Photo by Tim Bugbee
Basses
- Four Spector Limited Edition Euro4 Ian Hill basses, two tuned to D#–G#–C#–F#, and two tuned to A#–D#–G#–C#
Amps
- SWR SM-1500
- SWR Triad 3-Way Bass Speaker System
Effects
- Boss ME-50B Bass Multiple Effects
- Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor
- Mike Hill Services ABCD Guitar Switcher
- Mike Hill Services Earth Loop - Ground Hum Eliminator
- Shure AD4D Two-Channel Digital Wireless Receiver
Strings & Picks
- DR Black Beauties BKB-50 K3 Black Coated Bass Strings
- Dunlop Nylon Standard .73 mm picks
- Signature InTune plectrums
Tipton says the rhythm guitars are put down to create a certain sound throughout the album, but for lead breaks, they will try anything to create the sound they want. “I’ll tweak [my sound] with different mikes and effects,” he explains. “Andy is very good with shaping the guitar sounds, and he knows what he needs to do to get it to sound like Priest.” The bass runs clean, direct to a laptop via an interface. Hill says this has been his approach for some time. “You need a clean bass sound—one that cuts through the two distorted guitars,” he says. “Anything that needs to be changed, or any effect that needs to go on, is put on afterwards.”
As for the actual songwriting process, Tipton says it remains more or less the same, whereby he, Halford, and Faulkner all produce ideas separately then pool them together. But Faulkner has a slightly more nuanced take on the songwriting process, one that you might expect from someone who grew up a fan of the band.
“It’s heavy metal, it’s the shield that we all fly proudly and get behind, and it’s the thing that binds us together.” —Richie Faulkner
“It’s the scariest thing,” he admits. “Let’s say you take fifteen ideas, they’re not complete—they’re just ideas that you think are winners. Then, it’s your turn to put your stuff on and show the room. You think it’s good, but then you put it on in front of Glenn Tipton and Rob Halford, you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, what have I done here?’ Because all of a sudden, all your stuff sounds like shit,” he laughs. “I think that’s just the insecurities, and then you realize, they put ideas forward and they’re thinking the same thing.” One of the things Faulkner appreciates about this process is that it challenges him to think differently about his own ideas. “Glenn might say, ‘Turn that bit around,’ or ‘Change the feel in that bit.’ And then I do it and it’s like, ‘Ah, that’s actually unique. I wouldn’t have thought of that.’ And that’s when having three creative minds in the room makes the end result a lot better.”
When it comes to crafting and tracking his guitar solos, Faulkner says about 75 percent of it is improvised. “We press record and let it rip,” he explains. “You do that three or four times and a couple of things become constant, subconsciously, and they stick, and so you build around that.” There are a few songs he worked out before recording, including “Panic Attack,” “Invincible Shield,” and “As God Is My Witness.”
“It’s your turn to put your stuff on and show the room. You think it’s good, but then you put it on in front of Glenn Tipton and Rob Halford, you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, what have I done here?’” —Richie Faulkner
Circling back around to the way Invincible Shield was pieced together remotely, Faulkner says there are always challenges when you record music. “Whether it’s Jaws and the shark is not working, or it’s our situation, there’s always a challenge in making art and that’s what makes it special,” he says. “The challenge for us was getting Invincible Shield to sound cohesive while recording it separately. By overcoming those challenges, it arms you for the next one, and you do it again and hopefully grow.”
YouTube It
At their 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Judas Priest unleashed a three-guitar attack with K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton, and Richie Faulkner.
- Judas Priest Announce New Album 'Invincible Shield' ›
- Hooked: Devin Townsend on Judas Priest's "The Sentinel" ›
- Rig Rundown: Judas Priest ›
- Discover Judas Priest's Guitarmony & Sick Riffs - Premier Guitar ›
Stevie Van Zandt with “Number One,” the ’80s reissue Stratocaster—with custom paisley pickguard from luthier Dave Petillo—that he’s been playing for the last quarter century or so.
There’s a life-size cameo of a go-go dancer in banana yellow; she’s frozen in mid hip shimmy. One wall displays rock posters and B-movie key art, anchored by a 3D rendering of Cream’s Disraeli Gearsalbum cover that swishes and undulates as you walk past it. Van Zandt’s shelves are stuffed with countless DVDs, from Louis Prima to the J. Geils Band performing on the German TV concert seriesRockpalast. There are three copies ofIggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit. Videos of the great ’60s-music TV showcases, from Hullabaloo to Dean Martin’s The Hollywood Palace, sit here. Hundreds of books about rock ’n’ roll, from Greil Marcus’s entire output to Nicholas Schaffner’s seminal tome, The Beatles Forever, form a library in the next room.
But I haven’t seen this yet because the elevator is dead, and I am in it. Our trap is tiny, about 5' by 5'. A dolly filled with television production equipment is beside me. There’s a production assistant whom I’ve never met until this morning and another person who’s brand new to me, too, Geoff Sanoff. It turns out that he’s Van Zandt’s engineer—the guy who runs this studio. And as I’ll discover shortly, he’s also one of the several sentinels who watch over Stevie Van Zandt’s guitars.
There’s nothing to do now but wait for the NYFD, so Sanoff and I get acquainted. We discover we’re both from D.C. and know some of the same people in Washington’s music scene. We talk about gear. We talk about this television project. I’m here today assisting an old pal, director Erik Nelson, best known for producing Werner Herzog’s most popular documentaries, like Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Van Zandt has agreed to participate in a television pilot about the British Invasion. After about half an hour, the elevator doors suddenly slide open, and we’re rescued, standing face-to-face with three New York City firefighters.
As our camera team sets up the gear, Sanoff beckons me to a closet off the studio’s control room. I get the sense I am about to get a consolation prize for standing trapped in an elevator for the last 30 minutes. He pulls a guitar case off the shelf—it’s stenciled in paint with the words “Little Steven” on its top—snaps open the latches, and instantly I am face to face with Van Zandt’s well-worn 1957 Stratocaster. Sanoff hands it to me, and I’m suddenly holding what may as well be the thunderbolt of Zeus for an E Street Band fan. My jaw drops when he lets me plug it in so he can get some levels on his board, and the clean, snappy quack of the nearly 70-year-old pickups fills the studio. For decades, Springsteen nuts have enjoyed a legendary 1978 filmed performance of “Rosalita” from Phoenix, Arizona, that now lives on YouTube. This is the Stratocaster Van Zandt had slung over his shoulder that night. It’s the same guitar he wields in the famous No Nukes concert film shot at Madison Square Garden a year later, in 1979. My mind races. The British Invasion is all well and essential. But now I’m thinking about Van Zandt’s relationship with his guitars.
Stevie Van Zandt's Gear
Van Zandt’s guitar concierge Andy Babiuk helped him plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings.
Guitars
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster (studio only)
- ’80s Fender ’57 Stratocaster reissue “Number One”
- Gretsch Tennessean
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (studio only)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2024 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (candy apple green)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2023 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (snowglo)
- Rickenbacker 2018 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Fab Gear (jetglo)
- Two Rickenbacker 1993Plus 12-strings (candy apple purple and SVZ blue)
- Rickenbacker 360/12C63 12-string (fireglo)
- Vox Teardrop (owned by Andy Babiuk)
Amps
- Two Vox AC30s
- Two Vox 2x12 cabinets
Effects
- Boss Space Echo
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Rotary Ensemble
- Durham Electronics Sex Drive
- Durham Electronics Mucho Busto
- Durham Electronics Zia Drive
- Electro-Harmonix Satisfaction
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro switcher
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario (.095–.44)
- D’Andrea Heavy
Van Zandt has reached a stage of reflection in his career. Besides the Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out in 2024, he recently wrote and published his autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations (2021), a rollicking read in which he pulls no punches and makes clear he still strives to do meaningful things in music and life.
His laurels would weigh him down if they were actually wrapped around his neck. In the E Street Band, Van Zandt has participated in arguably the most incredible live group in rock ’n’ roll history. And don’t forget Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes or Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He created both the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country radio channels on Sirius/XM. He started a music curriculum program called TeachRock that provides no-cost resources and other programs to schools across the country. Then there’s the politics. Via his 1985 record, Sun City, Van Zandt is credited with blasting many of the load-bearing bricks that brought the walls of South African apartheid tumbling into dust. He also acted in arguably the greatest television drama in American history, with his turn as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
Puzzlingly, Van Zandt’s autobiography lacks any detail on his relationship with the electric guitar. And Sanoff warns me that Van Zandt is “not a gearhead.” Instead he has an organization in place to keep his guitar life spinning like plates on the end of pointed sticks. Besides Sanoff, there are three others: Ben Newberry has been Van Zandt’s guitar tech since the beginning of 1982. Andy Babiuk, owner of Rochester, New York, guitar shop Fab Gear and author of essential collector reference books Beatles Gear and Rolling Stones Gear (the latter co-authored by Greg Prevost) functions as Van Zandt’s guitar concierge. Lastly, luthier Dave Petillo, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey, oversees all the maintenance and customization on Van Zandt’s axes.
“I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes.” —Stevie Van Zandt
I crawl onto Zoom with Van Zandt for a marathon session and come away from our 90 minutes with the sense that he is a man of dichotomies. Sure, he’s a guitar slinger, but he considers his biggest strengths to be as an arranger, producer, and songwriter. “I don’t feel that being a guitar player is my identity,” he tells me. “For 40 years, ever since I made my first solo record, I just have not felt that I express myself as a guitar player. I still enjoy it when I do it; I’m not ambivalent. When I play a solo, I am in all the way, and I play a solo like I would like to hear if I were in the audience. But the guitar part is really part of the song’s arrangement. And a great solo is a composed solo. Great solos are ones you can sing, like Jimi Hendrix’s solo in ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
In his autobiography, Van Zandt mentions that his first guitar was an acoustic belonging to his grandfather. “I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes,” Van Zandt tells me. “The teacher said I had natural ability. I’m thinking, if I got natural ability, then what the fuck do I need you for? So I never went back. After that, I got my first electric, an Epiphone. It was about slowing down the records to figure out with my ear what they were doing. It was seeing live bands and standing in front of that guitar player and watching what they were doing. It was praying when a band went on TV that the cameraman would occasionally go to the right place and show what the guitar player was doing instead of putting the camera on the lead singer all the time. And I’m sure it was the same for everybody. There was no concept of rock ’n’ roll lessons. School of Rock wouldn’t exist for another 30 years. So, you had to go to school yourself.”
By the end of the 1960s, Van Zandt tells me he had made a conscious decision about what kind of player he wanted to be. “I realized that I really wasn’t that interested in becoming a virtuoso guitar player, per se. I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.”
After the Beatles and the Stones broke the British Invasion wide open, bands like Cream and the Yardbirds most influenced him. “George Harrison would have that perfect 22-second guitar solo,” Van Zandt remembers. “Keith Richards. Dave Davies. Then, the harder stuff started coming. Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. Eric Clapton with things like ‘White Room.’ But the songs stayed in a pop configuration, three minutes each or so. You’d have this cool guitar-based song with a 15-second, really amazing Jeff Beck solo in it. That’s what I liked. Later, the jam bands came, but I was not into that. My attention deficit disorder was not working for the longer solos,” he jokes. Watch a YouTube video of any recent E Street Band performance where Van Zandt solos, and the punch and impact of his approach and attack are apparent. At Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., last year, his solo on “Rosalita” was 13 powerful seconds.
Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen’s relationship goes back to their earliest days on the Jersey shore. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” recalls Van Zandt. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster.”
Photo by Pamela Springsteen
Van Zandt left his Epiphone behind for his first Fender. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells me. “I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
In those days, and around those parts, players only had one guitar. Van Zandt recalls, “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster, because Jimi Hendrix had come in and Jeff Beck had switched to a Strat. They all kind of went from Telecaster to Les Pauls. And then some of them went on to the Stratocaster. For me, the Les Paul was just too out of reach. It was too expensive, and it was just too heavy. So I said, I’m going to switch to a Stratocaster. It felt a little bit more versatile.”
Van Zandt still employs Stratocasters, and besides the 1957 I strummed, he was seen with several throughout the ’80s and ’90s. But for the last 20 or 25 years, Van Zandt has mainly wielded a black Fender ’57 Strat reissue from the ’80s with a maple fretboard and a gray pearloid pickguard. He still uses that Strat—dubbed “Number One”—but the pickguard has been switched to one sporting a purple paisley pattern that was custom-made by Dave Petillo.
Petillo comes from New Jersey luthier royalty and followed in the footsteps of his late father, Phil Petillo. At a young age, the elder Petillo became an apprentice to legendary New York builder John D’Angelico. Later, he sold Bruce Springsteen the iconic Fender Esquire that’s seen on the Born to Run album cover and maintained and modified that guitar and all of Bruce’s other axes until he passed away in 2010. Phil worked out of a studio in the basement of their home, not far from Asbury Park. Artists dropped in, and Petillo has childhood memories of playing pick-up basketball games in his backyard with members of the E Street Band. (He also recalls showing his Lincoln Logs to Johnny Cash and once mistaking Jerry Garcia for Santa Claus.)
“I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.” —Stevie Van Zandt
“I’ve known Stevie Van Zandt my whole life,” says Petillo. “My dad used to work on his 1957 Strat. That guitar today has updated tuners, a bone nut, new string trees, and a refret that was done by Dad long ago. I think one volume pot may have been changed. But it still has the original pickups.” Petillo is responsible for a lot of the aesthetic flair seen on Van Zandt’s instruments. He continues, “Stevie is so much fun to work with. I love incorporating colors into things, and Stevie gets that. When you talk to a traditional Telecaster or Strat player, and you say, ‘I want to do a tulip paisley pickguard in neon blue-green,’ they’re like, ‘Holy cow, that’s too much!’ But for Stevie, it’s just natural. So I always text him with pickguard designs, asking him, ‘Which one do you like?’ And he calls me a wild man; he says, ‘I don’t have that many Strats to put them on!’ But I’ll go to Ben Newberry and say, ‘Ben, I made these pickguards; let’s get them on the guitar. And I’ll go backstage, and we’ll put them on. I just love that relationship; Stevie is down for it.”
Petillo takes care of the electronics on Van Zandt’s guitars. Almost all of the Strats are modified with an internal Alembic Stratoblaster preamp circuit, which Van Zandt can physically toggle on and off using a switch housed just above the input jack. Van Zandt tells me, “That came because I got annoyed with the whole pedal thing. I’m a performer onstage, and I’m integrated with the audience and I like the freedom to move. And if I’m across the stage and all of a sudden Bruce nods to me to take a solo, or there’s a bit in the song that requires a little bit of distortion, it’s just easier to have that; sometimes, I’ll need that extra little boost for a part I’m throwing in, and it’s convenient.”
In recent times, Van Zandt has branched out from the Stratocaster, which has a lot to do with Andy Babiuk's influence. The two met 20 years ago, and Babiuk’s band, the Chesterfield Kings, is on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. “He’d call me up and ask me things like, ‘What’s Brian Jones using on this song?’” explains Babiuk. “When I’d ask him why, he’d tell me, ‘Because I want to have that guitar.’ It’s a common thing for me to get calls and texts from him like that. And there’s something many people overlook that Stevie doesn’t advertise: He’s a ripping guitar player. People think of him as playing chords and singing backup for Bruce, but the guy rips. And not just on guitar, on multiple instruments.”
Van Zandt tells me he wanted to bring more 12-string to the E Street Band this tour, “just to kind of differentiate the tone.” He explains, “Nils is doing his thing, and Bruce is doing his thing, and I wanted to do more 12-string.” He laughs, “I went full Paul Kantner!” Babiuk helped Van Zandt plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings. Each 12-string has a modified nut made by Petillo from ancient woolly mammoth tusk, and the D, A, and low E strings are inverted with their octave.
Van Zandt explains this to me: “I find that the strings ring better when the high ones are on top. I’m not sure if that’s how Roger McGuinn did it, but it works for me. I’m also playing a wider neck.”
Babiuk tells me about a unique Rick in Van Zandt’s rack of axes: “I know the guys at Rickenbacker well, and they did a run of 30 basses in candy apple purple for my shop. I showed one to Stevie, and purple is his color; he loves it. He asked me to get him a 12-string in the same color, and I told him, ‘They don’t do one-offs; they don’t have a custom shop,’ but it’s hard to say no to the guy! So I called Rickenbacker and talked them into it. I explained, ‘He’ll play it a lot on this upcoming tour.’ They made him a beautiful one with his OM logo.”
The purple one-off is a 1993Plus model and sports a 1 3/4" wide neck—1/8" wider than a normal Rickenbacker. Van Zandt loved it so much that he had Babiuk wrestle with Rickenbacker again to build another one in baby blue. Petillo has since outfitted them with paisley-festooned custom pickguards. When guitar tech Newberry shows me these unique axes backstage, I can see the input jack on the purple guitar is labeled with serial number 01001.
“Some of my drive is based on gratitude,” says Van Zandt, “feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Van Zandt also currently plays a white Vox Teardrop. That guitar is a prototype owned by Babiuk. “Stevie wanted a Teardrop,” Babiuk tells me, “but I explained that the vintage ones are hit and miss—the ones made in the U.K. were often better than the ones manufactured in Italy. Korg now owns Vox, and I have a new Teardrop prototype from them in my personal collection. When I showed it to him, he loved it and asked me to get him one. I had to tell him, ‘I can’t; it’s a prototype, there’s only one,’ and he asked me to sell him mine,” he chuckles. “I told him, ‘It’s my fucking personal guitar, it’s not for sale!’ So I ended up lending it to him for this tour, and I told him, ‘Remember, this is my guitar; don’t get too happy with it, okay?’
“He asked me why that particular guitar sounds and feels so good. Besides being a prototype built by only one guy, the single-coil pickups’ output is abnormally hot, and the neck feels like a nice ’60s Fender neck. Stevie’s obviously a dear friend of mine, and he can hold onto it for as long as he wants. I’m glad it’s getting played. It was just hanging in my office.”
Van Zandt tells me how Babiuk’s Vox Teardrop sums up everything he wants from his tone, and says, “It’s got a wonderfully clean, powerful sound. Like Brian Jones got on ‘The Last Time.’ That’s my whole thing; that’s the trick—trying to get the power without too much distortion. Bruce and Nils get plenty of distortion; I am trying to be the clean rhythm guitar all the time.”
If Van Zandt has a consigliere like Tony Soprano had Silvio Dante, that’s Newberry. Newberry has tech’d nearly every gig with Van Zandt since 1982. “Bruce shows move fast,” he tells me. “So when there’s a guitar change for Stevie, and there are many of them, I’m at the top of the stairs, and we switch quickly. There’s maybe one or two seconds, and if he needs to tell me something, I hear it. He’s Bruce’s musical director, so he may say something like, ‘Remind me tomorrow to go over the background vocals on “Ghosts,”’ or something like that. And I take notes during the show.”
“Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to a Telecaster.” —Stevie Van Zandt
When I ask Newberry how he defines Van Zandt’s relationship to the guitar, he doesn’t hesitate, snapping back, “It’s all in his head. His playing is encyclopedic, whether it’s Bruce or anything else. He may show up at soundcheck and start playing the Byrds, but it’s not ‘Tambourine Man,’ it’s something obscure like ‘Bells of Rhymney.’ People may not get it, but I’ve known him long enough to know what’s happening. He’s got everything already under his fingers. Everything.”
As such, Van Zandt says he never practices. “The only time I touch a guitar between tours is if I’m writing something or maybe arranging backing vocal harmonies on a production,” he tells me.
Before we say goodbye, I tell Van Zandt about my time stuck in his elevator, and his broad grin signals that I may not be the only one to have suffered that particular purgatory. When I ask him about the 1957 Stratocaster I got to play upon my release, he recalls: “Bruce Springsteen gave me that guitar. I’ve only ever had one guitar stolen in my life, and it was in the very early days of my joining the E Street Band. I only joined temporarily for what I thought would be about seven gigs, and in those two weeks or so, my Stratocaster was stolen. It was a 1957 or 1958. Bruce felt bad about that and replaced that lost guitar with this one. So I’ve had it a long, long time. Once that first one was stolen, I decided I would resist having a personal relationship with any one guitar. But that one being a gift from Bruce makes it special. I will never take it back on the road.”
After 50 years of rock ’n’ roll, if there is one word to sum up Stevie Van Zandt, it may be “restless”—an adjective you sense from reading his autobiography. He gets serious and tells me, “I’m always trying to catch up. The beginning of accomplishing something came quite late to me. I feel like I haven’t done nearly enough. What are we on this planet trying to do?” he asks rhetorically. “We’re trying to realize our potential and maybe leave this place one percent better for the next guy. And some of my drive is based on gratitude, feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever. That’s what I’m doing: I want to give something back. I feel an obligation.”
YouTube It
“Rosalita” is a perennial E Street Band showstopper. Here’s a close-up video from Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park last summer. Van Zandt’s brief but commanding guitar spotlight shines just past the 4:30 mark.
Pickup screws with latex tubing.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to eliminate most of these issues. And if you haven’t faced such problems on your Tele, you can still give these a try, and chances are good that you never will. These procedures will not alter the tone of your Telecaster in any way, so it’s better to have it and not need rather than to need it and not have it.
Checking the Pickups
Over the years, I have seen the wildest things coming stock from the factory, especially on budget pickups: unbent metal tabs on neck pickups, loose metal base plates on bridge pickups, bridge pickups only held by the springs, and other crazy stuff.
Let’s start with the neck pickup. Make sure the cover is installed tightly and is not loose in any way. The metal cover is only held by three metal tabs that are bent around the bottom of the pickup, one of them usually connected to the pickup’s ground. Make sure they are tight, holding the metal cover firmly in place. If not, they need to be re-bent. Be careful to not break them.
“Often, these small metal springs can cause feedback, and I’m sure Leo Fender had his reasons for choosing latex tubing instead.”
On the bridge pickup, the metal base plate on the bottom needs to be attached firmly. Check with your fingers to see if it can move. If so, even in only one spot, you need to re-glue it to isolate vibration. Otherwise, it will squeal at high volumes. This is easy to do, and the easiest and best way is to completely take the base plate off, clean it, and re-glue it with a thin layer of silicone from your local Home Depot.
While you are in there, it’s always a good idea to convert both pickups to 3-conductor wiring by breaking the ground connection of the metal cover (neck pickup) and the base plate (bridge pickup). Attach a third wire to one of the lugs of the metal cover and another one to the metal base plate, and solder both to a grounding point of your choice, e.g. the casing of one of the pots. This can be helpful for future mods, like any 4-way switch mod, where this is a mandatory requirem
Un-springing the Pickup Attachment
If your pickups are attached with metal springs to enable height-adjustment, you should replace them with some latex tubing. Often, these small metal springs can cause feedback, and I’m sure Leo Fender had his reasons for choosing latex tubing instead of metal springs. This is cheap, fast, and easy to do; you can get latex tubing from any guitar store or online for only a few cents. (See photo at top.)
Cushioning the Pickups
On a Tele, there’s usually a gap between the bottom of the pickups and the inside of the guitar’s body. This open space can exacerbate feedback issues. Luckily, it’s easy to solve with a piece of foam.
Using a piece of white paper, outline the routing for each pickup. Cut them out as a template for the foam. Then, trim the foam to shape. Place the foam on the bottom of both pickup routings, and you are done. There is no need to glue or attach the foam in any way.
It’s important that the bottom of the pickup is touching the foam so there is no more open gap. I usually use foam that is a little bit thicker than necessary, so the pickup will press on it slightly, making a perfect connection. The type of foam is not important as long as the gap is closed. I prefer to use foam rubber that is easily available in a variety of thicknesses.
Closing Support Routings
On a lot of Telecasters, you can find open support routings from the neck pickup routing towards the electronic compartment. This is for easier access when running the wires of the neck pickup through the body.
Note the various cavities in this typical Telecaster body.
Photo courtesy of Singlecoil (https://singlecoil.com)
There are two ways of routing the wires of the neck pickup through the body: from the neck pickup routing directly into the electronic compartment or into the routing of the bridge pickup, and from there into the electronic compartment, which is the traditional way. In the latter case, make sure all the wires are running underneath the additional piece of foam. If you have any open support routings on your Telecaster body, put some foam in to close them. You don’t need to attach the foam; the pickguard will hold it in place. The kind of foam doesn’t matter, and you can also use things like a small piece of cotton cloth, cotton wool, Styrofoam, etc. in there.
Addressing Bridge Plate Flaws
One of the most common reasons for unwanted feedback is the typical Telecaster bridge plate. The Telecaster bridge system was designed in the ’40s by Leo Fender himself and is crude at best. Its function was simply positioning the strings and providing a rough, easy adjustment of the intonation and the string-height settings. It wasn’t long before Fender released the much-improved bridge design found on the Stratocaster.
The current production Fender vintage bridge plate, as well as most budget aftermarket bridge plates, is made from thin hot-rolled steel in a deep-drawn process. Using this manufacturing process, parts can be made very quickly and cheaply, but at severe cost in quality. The steel used must be very soft and thin to allow it to fold and bend in the corners.
A classic Telcaster bridge plate.
Photo courtesy of Singlecoil (https://singlecoil.com)
Unfortunately, this process creates unusual internal stress in the steel, which can bow the plate so it can’t sit flat on the wooden body. This is a common reason for unwanted feedback on so many Teles. Interestingly, the early vintage bridge plates Fender made used a cold-rolled steel procedure to relieve stress in the material and to avoid this problem. Long live modern mass production!
If you have a Tele with a bowed bridge plate, there are three possible things you can do:
• Change the bowed bridge plate for a straight and even one. (This is the easiest way to avoid any troubles.) There are excellent replacement bridge plates on the market, so you’ll have plenty of choices for materials, designs, finishes, etc.
• Get the bowed bridge plate to a metal fabricator or tool maker so they can try to solve the problem for you. This process will probably cost you more than a new bridge, so this is only an option if it’s a special bridge you want to keep, no matter the cost.
• Drill two small additional holes on the front of the bridge plate, shown as red dots in the picture. After re-installing the bridge plate on the guitar, tightly drill two wood screws through these holes. Often, modern replacement bridges already have these two additional holes. In many cases, this will do the trick, so you don´t have to buy a new bridge.
If you have gone through this entire list and still have problems with feedback, it’s very likely that the pickup itself needs to be re-potted, which a pickup builder can do for you.
Next month, we will stay on the Telecaster subject, taking a close look at the famous Andy Summers Telecaster wiring, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Andy Powers has been working with electric guitars his whole life, and he’s been slowly collecting all the ideas that could go into his own “solo project,” waiting for the right time to strike.
As CEO, president, and chief guitar designer of Taylor Guitars, Andy Powers has an unimaginable amount of experience sifting through his ideas and, with a large production mechanism at hand, efficiently and effectively realizing them. He knows that there are great ideas that need more time, and rethinking electric guitar design—from the neck to the pickups to how its hollow body is constructed—doesn’t come quickly. His A-Type—which has appeared in Premier Guitarin the hands of guitarists Andy Summers and Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard—is the innovative flagship model of his new brand, Powers Electric. And it’s the culmination of a lifetime of thought, experience, and influences.
“Southern California is a birthplace of a lot of different things. I think of it as the epicenter of electric guitar.”
“I’ve got a lot of musician friends who write songs and have notebooks of ideas,” explains Powers. “They go, ‘I’ve got these three great verses and a bridge, but no chorus. I’ll just put it on the shelf; I’ll come back to it.’ Or ‘I’ve got this cool hook,’ or ‘I’ve got this cool set of chord changes,’ or whatever it might be—they’re half-finished ideas. And once in a while, you take them off the shelf, blow the dust off, and go, ‘That’s a really nice chorus. Maybe I should write a couple of verses for it someday. But not today.’ And they put it back.”
That’s how his electric guitar design spent decades collecting in Powers’ head. There were influences that he wanted to play with that fell far afield from his acoustic work at Taylor, and he saw room to look at some technical aspects of the instrument a little differently, with his own flair.
The Powers Electric A-Type draws from Powers’ lifelong influences of cars, surfing, and skateboarding.
Over the course of Powers’ “long personal history” with the instrument, he’s built, played, restored, and repaired electric guitars. And, having grown up in Southern California, surrounded by custom-car culture, skateboarding, and surfing—all things he loves—he sees the instrument as part of his design DNA.
“Southern California is a birthplace of a lot of different things,” Powers explains. “I think of it as the epicenter of electric guitar. Post-World War II, you had Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby and Les Paul—all these guys living within just a couple of miles of each other. And I grew up in those same sorts of surroundings.”
Those influences and the ideas about what to do with them kept collecting without a plan to take action. “At some point,” he says, “you need the catalyst to go, ‘Hey, you know what? I actually have the entire guitar’s worth of ideas sitting right in front of me, and they all go together. I would want to play that guitar if it existed. Now is a good time to build that guitar.’”
“I started thinking, ‘If I had been alive then, what would I have made?’ It’s kind of an open-ended question, because at that point, well, there’s no parts catalogs to buy stuff from. A lot of these things hadn’t been invented yet. How would you interpret this?”
The pandemic ultimately served as the catalyst Powers’ electric guitars needed, and that local history proved to be a jumping-off point necessary for focusing his long-marinating ideas. “I started thinking, ‘If I had been alive then, what would I have made?’ It’s kind of an open-ended question, because at that point, well, there’s no parts catalogs to buy stuff from. A lot of these things hadn’t been invented yet. How would you interpret this? As a designer, I think that’s really interesting. Overlay that with understanding what happens to electric guitars and how people want to use them, as well as some acoustic engineering. Well, that’s pretty fascinating. That’s an interesting mix.”
Tucked away in his home workshop, Powers set about designing a guitar, building “literally every little bit other than a couple screws” including handmade and hand-polished knobs. Soon, the prototype for the Powers Electric A-Type was born. “I played this guitar and went, ‘I’ve been waiting a long time to play this guitar.’ A friend played it and went, ‘I want one, too.’ Okay, I’ll make another one. Made two more. Made three more….”
The A-Type—seen here with both vibrato and hardtail—is a fully hollow guitar that is built in what Powers calls a “hot-rod shop” on the Taylor Guitars campus.
From there, Powers recalls that he started bringing his ideas back to his shop on Taylor’s campus, where he set up “essentially a small hot-rod shop” to build these new guitars. “It’s a real small-scale operation,” he explains. “It exists here at Taylor Guitars, but in its own lane.”
The A-Type—currently the only planned Powers Electric model—has the retro appeal of classic SoCal electrics. Its single-cut body style is unique but points to the curvature of midcentury car designs, and the wide range of vibrant color options help drive that home. Conceptually, the idea of reinventing each piece of the guitar’s hardware points toward the instrument’s creators. That might get a vintage guitar enthusiast’s motor running, but it’s in the slick precision of those parts—from the bridge and saddle to the pickup components—where the A-Type’s modernism shines.
“It’s a real small-scale operation. It exists here at Taylor Guitars, but in its own lane.”
Grabbing hold of the guitar, it’s clearly an instrument living on the contemporary cutting edge. The A-Type’s neck gives the clearest indication that it’s a high-performance machine; it’s remarkably easy to fret, with low action but just enough bite across the board. Powers put a lot of thought into the fretboard dynamics that make that so, and he decided to create a hybrid radius. “You have about a 9 1/2" radius, which is really what your hand feels, but then under the plain strings, it’s a bit flatter at 14, 15-ish—it’s so subtle, it’s really tough to measure.” Without reading the specs and talking to Powers, I don’t know that I would detect the difference—and I certainly didn’t upon first try. It just felt easy to play precisely without losing character or veering into “shredder guitar” territory.
The A-Type looks like a solidbody, but you’ll know it’s hollow by its light, balanced weight. That makes it comfortable to hold, whether standing or sitting. But its hollow-ness is no inhibitor to style: I’ve yet to provoke any unintended feedback from any of my amps. Powers explains that’s part of the design, which uses V-class bracing, similar to what you’ll find on a modern Taylor acoustic.
Powers says the A-Type that is now being produced is no different than the prototype he built in his home workshop: “I have the blueprint, still, that I hand drew. I can hold the guitar that we’re making up against that drawing, and it would be like I traced over it.”
“Coupling the back and the top of the guitar matter a lot,” he asserts. “When you do that, you can make them move in parallel so that they are not prone to feeding back on stage. You don’t actually have that same Helmholtz resonance going on that makes a hollowbody guitar feedback. It’s still moving.”
On a traditional hollowbody, he points out, the top and back move independently, compressing the air inside the body. “It’ll make one start to run away by re-amplifying its own sound,” he explains. “But if I can make them touch each other, then they move together as a unit. When they do that, you’re not compressing the air inside the body. But it’s still moving. So, you get this dynamic resonance that you want out of a hollowbody guitar; it’s just not prone to feedback.”
What I hear from the A-Type is a rich, dynamic tone, full of resonance, sustain, and volume. I found it to be surprisingly loud and vibrant when unplugged. Powers tells me that’s in part due to the “stressed spherical top” and explains, “I take this piece of wood and I stress it into a sphere, which unnaturally raises its resonant frequency well above what the piece of wood normally could. It’s kind of sprung, ready to set in motion as soon as you strike the string. So, it becomes a mechanical amplifier.” The bridge then sits in two soundposts, which Powers says makes it “almost like a cello.”
“Literally every little bit other than a couple screws” on the A-Type is custom made.
The single-coil pickups take it from there. They’re available in two variations, Full Faraday and Partial Faraday, the latter of which were in my demo model, and Powers tells me they are the brighter option. Their design, he says, has been in progress for about seven or eight years. The concept behind the pickups is to use the “paramagnetic quality of aluminum”—found in the pickup housing—“to shape the magnetic field … which functions almost like a Faraday cage.” And he complements them with a simple circuit on the way out.
I found them to run quietly, as promised, and offer a transparent tone with plenty of headroom. They paired excellently with the ultra-responsive playability and feel of the guitar, so I could play as dynamically as I desired. If a standard solidbody with single-coils offers the performance of a practical sedan, this combo gave the A-Type the feel of a well-tuned racecar. At low volumes and with no pedals, it felt like I was simply amplifying the guitar’s acoustic sound, and I had full control with nothing but my pick. (Powers explains that the pickups have a wide resonance peak, which plays out to my ear.) Add pedals to the mix, including distortion and fuzz, and that translates to an articulated, hi-fi sound.
Now up to serial number XXX, the Powers Electric team has refined their production process. I wonder about that first guitar, the dream guitar Powers built in his house. How similar is the guitar I’m holding to his original vision? “It’s very, very, very close,” Powers tells me. “Literally, this guitar outline is a tracing. It’s an exact duplicate of what I first drew on paper with a pencil. I have the blueprint, still, that I hand drew. I can hold the guitar that we’re making up against that drawing, and it would be like I traced over it.”
“It’s one of those things you do because you just really want to do it. It puts some spark in your life.”
Playing the guitar and, later, talking through its features, I’m left with few questions. But one that remains has to do with branding and marketing, not the instrument: Why go to all the effort to create a new brand for the A-Type, which is to say, why isn’t this a Taylor? For Powers, it’s about design. “As guitar players,” he explains, “we know what Taylor guitars are, we know what it stands for, and we know what we do. The design language of a Taylor guitar is a very specific thing. When I look at a Taylor acoustic guitar, I go, ‘I need curves like this, I need colors like this, I need shapes like this.’”
Those aren’t the same curves, colors, and shapes as the Powers Electric design, nor do they mine the same influences. “There’s a look and a feel to what a Taylor is. And that is different from this. I look at this and go, ‘It’s not the same.’”
Of course, adding the A-Type to the well-established Taylor catalog would probably be easier in lots of ways, but Powers’ positioning of the brand is a sign of his dedication to the project. It feels like a labor of love. “They’re guitars that I really wanted to make,” he tells me enthusiastically. “And I’m excited that they get to exist. It’s one of those things you do because you just really want to do it. It puts some spark in your life.”
“It’s like a solo project,” he continues. “As musicians, you front this band, you do this thing, and you also like these other kinds of music and you’ve got other musician friends, and you want to do something that’s a different flavor. You try to make some space to do that, too.”
